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Feeling the Homesickness Slip Away

THREE applied early to their first-choice colleges and were accepted. The remaining five were accepted by 27 colleges, put on a wait-list by 4 others and rejected by 16. All eight students who shared their travails with a reporter last year are now freshmen at four-year colleges or universities, in California, Michigan, Illinois, and up and down the East Coast.

How is college living up to their expectations?

For the most part, the eight miss their old friends a lot more than they miss their families, and they love being away from home. Some -- even a few rejected by their first choices -- can't imagine being at any other college. Others are not convinced they made the right decision.

According to figures compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington, about one in four students who begin at a four-year college will transfer elsewhere.

Stephanie Aguilar

First in her Yonkers High School class of 190, Stephanie Aguilar, 18, was accepted by all seven of the colleges she applied to. In the end, she said, she chose between Wesleyan and Cornell.

"I would not have as much fun as I'm having anywhere else," Mr. Johnson said, adding: "I absolutely love Stanford. It's full of energy and there's a real sense of community, and I feel at home there." Mr. Johnson, elected president of his dormitory, says he is involved in "a really happy atmosphere," noting that "freedom is fun."

He ranked 32nd in a class of 600 at New Rochelle High School, and scored 1350 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT. He now says that although he has more work at college, it is somewhat easier than high school work was.

Also, he has made really close friends really fast.

"I've known my high school friends for my entire life," he said, "but I feel like I've known my college friends my entire life, too, because I live with them every day."

He is never homesick. Although he knows his parents miss him, he speaks to them perhaps once a week. "My mom e-mails me a lot," he said, "but I don't always respond."

Although he applied to Stanford for financial aid to defray the $45,000 annual cost, Mr. Johnson did not receive any.

Jessica Davidson

A clarinet player at Scarsdale High School who scored 1440 on the SAT, Jessica Davidson, 18, barely remembers any of those irrelevant statistics anymore. After she was accepted early by Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., she has never looked back. Indeed, even now, in the depth of the frigid winter, she says she is thrilled with the place.

"There's so much variety in what to do academically and socially," said Ms. Davidson, who has already chosen art history as her major, and "there are so many courses I can take in everything that interests me."

As for everything else: Ms. Davidson says that she gets along with her roommate, that the food is good, though not varied, and that there are plenty of parties to go to.

Still, "it's hard to be away from home," she said, "because there are so many things you have to figure out how to do for yourself." Those things include making doctor appointments, finding a cheap dry cleaner, doing laundry when the basket is full, and getting to the grocery store on a bike, she said.

Though she says she is not homesick, Ms. Davidson calls someone in her family nearly every day. She thinks her mother, especially, misses her.

"She's quieter, which is not necessarily a good thing," Ms. Davidson said.

Max Kravitz

At White Plains High School, Max Kravitz, 18, had a grade point average of 4.1 and scored a 1370 on the SAT. After being accepted by 5 of 11 schools, Mr. Kravitz, 18, ultimately chose between Union College, which offered him a merit scholarship of $12,000 a year, and George Washington University, which offered him no aid. He chose George Washington for its highly rated international affairs program, an option not available at Union.

Once on campus, Mr. Kravitz became adept at working the system: he wrote a fervent appeal for financial aid that must have been enormously persuasive. The college awarded him a half-tuition merit scholarship, worth about $18,000 a year, he said.

His dormitory, Thurston Hall, which houses 1,100 freshmen, does not seem all that different from his family's apartment building in White Plains. "I thought it would be louder and more obnoxious than it is," he said.

But the similarity in this case has not enamored him of George Washington. And there is also the fact that he hasn't yet made close friends.

"I have friends, but I'm not one to make close friends quickly," he said, adding that he hadn't expected "to miss my high school friends as much and talk with them as often as I do," which is pretty much every day.

Despite his reservations, though, Mr. Kravitz is a university cheerleader, one of 13 men and 11 women who practice two hours at a time, six days a week. He cheers at every home game for the men's and women's basketball teams, two to four times a week, as well as at some tournament games, he said.

About his decision to enroll, he said, "I don't think I did badly." But his final verdict on George Washington "is up in the air."

Chloe Wilson

As a 16-year-old senior at Mount Vernon High School, Chloe Wilson was a tennis player who graduated 60th in a class of 500, and scored 1000 on the SAT. She was denied admission at her first choice, Spelman College, a historically black college for women in Atlanta. But she was accepted by Penn State, Syracuse, Loyola and Binghamton University, though a few acceptances were contingent on her successful completion of an Educational Opportunity Program for underprivileged students.

In the end, Ms. Wilson decided to go to Binghamton, because she didn't want to leave New York, and because at Syracuse, "it was a rat race and everyone was a number," she said. "At Binghamton, it's more personalized, more like a family."

Attending the educational program there last summer was the best college preparation she could have undergone, said Ms. Wilson, whose sense of confidence, both personal and academic, has soared since high school.

The program "was almost a little boot camp," in which she had to take several rigorous classes and even observe a curfew.

"When I got back to campus in September," she said, "I didn't feel like a freshman. I had more than 100 friends already, and I had already scoped out the dorm, and I had my courses."

In the fall, "my mother was ready for me to go, and I was ready to go, too," said Ms. Wilson, especially as her mother had had a baby in June. Although fond of her new brother, Ms. Wilson was eager to embark on her new life.

Julie Scarpino

A diver and dancer with a 3.86 average at Byram Hills High School, 18-year-old Julie Scarpino scored 1330 on the SAT. She applied early decision to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and was accepted.

She is very happy there now, she says, although she misses her friends and sometimes "I wish I were closer to home so I could see my family."

Ms. Scarpino has made close friends at school, most of them from Tennessee and North Carolina, and nearly all hoping to visit her in New York, to see the city and the snow, she said. One new friend has lent her distinctive voice to Ms. Scarpino's cellphone voice-mail message, which begins with an enthusiastic "Hey, y'all!" The friend did this "to scare my Northern friends," Ms. Scarpino said with a laugh.

She has been surprised by the amount of socializing. She says weekends start on Wednesday night, "and there's always a movie or a club or someplace to be."

But even so, the schoolwork is difficult and the students highly motivated. Academically, "we're ranked with the highest workload in the country," Ms. Scarpino said, adding that "the library is full at 3 in the morning."

Apparently, she knows from experience.

Andrew Ecker

When he didn't get into Georgetown University, Andrew Ecker, 18, was deeply disappointed. Now he is sure that he couldn't be happier there than he is at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

With a 3.96 average at Byram Hills High School and a 1480 on the SAT, Mr. Ecker played soccer and was on the ski and golf teams. Despite his strong record, he was also denied admission at Duke and the University of North Carolina and put on a wait-list by Tufts.

In the end he chose Michigan over Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Southern California. After visiting all three last spring, he decided that Southern Cal "was just too far away," and that, ultimately, "I wanted a big school with a rah-rah attitude."

At first he was unnerved to realize that there were more students in his introductory economics class (about 300) than there had been in his high school graduating class (about 180).

But he has clearly learned to navigate the huge, somewhat impersonal bureaucracy of a large state-university system. He was dissatisfied with his housing assignment first semester, for example, so he arranged to move into a new dorm with a new roommate later this month, without help from the college.

"There are too many kids with housing situations for the school to deal with me personally," he said.

He has joined a fraternity, which has made life "a lot of fun." Weekends generally begin with fraternity parties on Thursday nights. Perhaps as a result, he is not at all homesick. In fact, by the end of December, he was already "homesick to go back to Michigan."

Franklin Ordoñez

The first in his family to attend college, Franklin Ordoñez, 18, set his sights on the Ivy League. Ranked 30th in a class of 285 at Ossining High School, he was rejected by the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Georgetown and Cornell, but accepted by Dartmouth.

He is now in residence in Hanover, N.H., and likes it so far -- if only just.

Dartmouth has students from all 50 states and dozens of countries, but Mr. Ordoñez was surprised to observe that it was not as diverse as he had expected. In his eyes, Hanover cannot compare with Ossining High School, where white students are in the minority and about one-third are Hispanic.

Still, he loves the food -- especially the sausage, egg and cheese croissant, which he described as "awesome." The girls there are "cute," not at all like the ones at home, who tended to be lazy.

"Everybody is competitive, everybody wants to get an A," he said. "It's like, 'Everybody get out of my way.' People get drunk every weekend and they still get A's," he added with amazement, saying, "I can't live that life."

College has helped him "learn how it is to live like an adult," said Mr. Ordoñez, but he misses his friends. Sometimes he wonders if he would be happier somewhere else, but he resists the thought; it would bring him down, he says.